Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (48 page)

Something to chew on while waiting for the haggis to cook:
A Scottish chef, John Paul McLachlan, created the world’s most expensive haggis for Burns Night in 2005. He marinated Scottish beef in Balvenie cask 191, a 50-year-old Scotch (only 83 bottles exist), and then boiled it in a sheep’s stomach. Cost: $5,500.

Why does Culembourg, Holland, allow sheep to roam the streets? It cuts down on speeding.

HOLLYWOOD LISTS

If you love movies…and you love lists, then this page is for you. (Everyone else please turn the page. Thank you.)

5 Actors Who Played Elvis

1
. David Keith

2
. Michael St. Gerard

3
. Kurt Russell

4
. Bruce Campbell

5
. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

5 Movie Code Names (used during filming to fool prying eyes)

1
. “Radiator Blues”
(Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

2
. “A Boy’s Life” (E.T.)

3
. “Blue Harvest”
(Return of the Jedi)

4
. “The Burly Man” (
Matrix Reloaded)

5
. “Watch the Skies”
(Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

5 Harley-Davidson Owners

1
. Goldie Hawn

2
. Olivia Newton-John

3
. Barbra Streisand

4
. Liz Taylor

5
. Cher

8 Films with One-Letter Titles

1
.
A
(Germany, 1969)

2
.
E
(Canada, 1981)

3
.
G
(U.K., 1974)

4
.
I
(Sweden, 1966)

5
.
M
(U.S., 1951)

6
.
W
(U.S., 1974)

7
.
X
(Germany, 1928)

8
.
Z
(U.S., 1983)

6 Left-handed Actresses

1
. Julia Roberts

2
. Angelina Jolie

3
. Shirley MacLaine

4
. Nicole Kidman

5
. Greta Garbo

6
. Sarah Jessica-Parker

7 Directors Who Never Won a “Best Director” Oscar

1
. Martin Scorsese

2
. Ridley Scott

3
. Stanley Kubrick

4
. Alfred Hitchcock

5
. Cecil B. DeMille

6
. Orson Welles

7
. David Lynch

5 “Colorful” Actors

1
.
Redd
Fox

2
. Tom
Green

3
. Betty
White

4
. Jennifer
Grey

5
. Jack
Black

8 Stars with Two First Names

1
. Raul Julia

2
. Kevin James

3
. Tom Arnold

4
. Meg Ryan

5
. Bruce Willis

6
. Jason Alexander

7
. Larry David

8
. John Wayne

7 Stars Who Started on Soap Operas

1
. Meg Ryan (As
the World Turns
)

2
. Ricky Martin (
General Hospital
)

3
. Demi Moore (
General Hospital
)

4
. Tommy Lee Jones (One
Life to Live
)

5
. Tobey Maguire (
General Hospital
)

6
. Marisa Tomei (
As the World Turns
)

7
. Teri Hatcher (
Capitol
)

Kermit the Frog was awarded an honorary doctorate from Southampton College in 1996.

POOR RICH PEOPLE

Want to be rich? You’re not alone. A 2003 Gallup poll found that while only 2% of Americans describe themselves as rich, 51% say that it’s their life’s goal. But beware: wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Take it from those who know
.

“I have made millions, but they have brought me no happiness.”

—John D. Rockefeller

“Your fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche. You must keep up with it! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children’s children.”

—Frederick Gates,
Rockefeller’s financial advisor

“I am the most miserable man on Earth.”

—John Jacob Astor

“The care of $200 million is enough to kill anyone. There’s no pleasure in it.”

—William H. Vanderbilt

“If I had my life to live over again, I’d be a $30-a-week librarian.”

—Andrew Carnegie

“I was happier when doing a mechanic’s job.”

—Henry Ford

“There is always the question. You wonder if people like you for you—or the inevitable disturbing question: ‘Are they after something?’”

—Mary Lea Johnson
,
Johnson & Johnson heiress

“I have a problem with too much money. I can’t reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.”

—Robert Kiyosaki
,
investor

“A great fortune is a great slavery.”

—Seneca
,
Roman philosopher

“I don’t care whether I win or lose, and when you can’t enjoy winning at poker, there’s no fun left in anything.”

—John MacKay
,
“Comstock Silver King”

“I’m not a paranoid deranged millionaire. G*d*mm*t, I’m a billionaire!”

—Howard Hughes

Worth the wait: A Vermont maple tree isn’t tapped for syrup until it is at least 40 years old.

“I never feel sorry for poor boys. It is the children of wealth who deserve sympathy; too often they are starved for incentive to create success for themselves.”

—James Cash Penney
,
founder of JC Penney

“It’s a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money’s worth.”

—George M. Humphrey
,
U.S. Secretary of Treasury

“Golden shackles are far worse than iron ones.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

“In some ways, a millionaire just can’t win. If he spends too freely, he is criticized for being extravagant and ostentatious. If, on the other hand, he lives quietly and thriftily, the same people will call him a miser.”

—J. Paul Getty
,
billionaire

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”

—Bill Gates

“Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”

—Warren Buffett

“Money doesn’t always bring happiness. People with $10 million are no happier than people with $9 million.”

—Hobart Brown
,
artist

“There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery: you can’t do any business from there.”

—Colonel Harland Sanders

“I’d like to live as a poor man, but with lots of money.”

—Pablo Picasso

*        *        *

MAKING MONEY THE ONASSIS WAY

Wealth was such a burden for Aristotle Onassis that he never wore an overcoat. Why? Because if he wore a coat, he’d have to leave a big tip for the coat check girl (she’d expect it). And his coat would have to be expensive (rich people are expected to wear fine clothes). And since his coat was expensive, he’d have to insure it (someone might steal it). “Without a topcoat,” said Onassis, “I save twenty thousand dollars a year.”

In Saudi Arabia, a woman may divorce her husband if he doesn’t supply her with coffee.

INFAMOUS WEAPONS

We couldn’t find Uncle John’s old Fart Bazooka, but we managed to find some other famous weapons
.

J
OHN WILKES BOOTH’S GUN
The gun that Booth used to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln now resides in the basement museum of Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, D.C. The gun is a single-shot flintlock, made by Philadelphia gunsmith Henry Derringer. It’s tiny—just six inches total in length with a 2½" barrel—but it’s powerful, firing a .44-caliber bullet. The gun was found on the floor of the theater box where Lincoln sat. Also in the museum is the knife with which Booth stabbed one of Lincoln’s companions, Major Henry Rathbone, in the arm before Booth jumped from the box to escape.

What about the bullet that killed one of the most revered figures in American history? You can see that, too. It was removed during a post-mortem autopsy and was kept by the U.S. War Department until 1940, when it went to the Department of the Interior. It can be viewed today at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

THE SARAJEVO PISTOL

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The assassinations caused a chain reaction of events which, within less than five weeks, led to the start of World War I. The gun was a Browning semiautomatic pistol, model M1910, serial #19074.

Princip, just 19, was a member of the Serbian nationalist group called the Black Hand. He fired seven shots into the royal couple’s car from five feet away, then attempted to shoot himself, but was stopped by passersby and quickly arrested. Princip died in prison of tuberculosis in 1918 (the disease was one reason he took the mission). After his trial, the pistol was presented to Father Anton Puntigam, the Jesuit priest who had given the archduke and duchess their last rites. He hoped to place it in a museum, but when he died in 1926 the gun was lost…for almost 80 years.

The yokohama, a Japanese bird, has tail feathers 12 feet long.

In 2004 a Jesuit community house in Austria made a startling announcement: they had found the gun (verified by its serial number). They donated it to the Vienna Museum of Military History in time for the 90th anniversary of the assassination that started a war that would eventually kill 8.5 million people. Also in the museum are the car in which the couple were riding, the bloodied pillow cover on which the archduke rested his head while dying, and petals from a rose that was attached to Sophie’s belt.

THE MUSSOLINI MACHINE GUN

On April 28, 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured while trying to flee into Switzerland. They were executed by an Italian communist named Valter Audisio, who shot the pair with a French-made MAS (Manufacture d’Armes de St. Etienne) 7.65mm submachine gun.

The gun disappeared until 1973, when Audisio died. He’d kept it in Italy until 1957, when, during a resurgence of Mussolini’s popularity, he secretly gave it to the communist Albanian government for safekeeping. With Audisio’s death, the Albanians proudly displayed the gun “on behalf of the Italian people.” Its home is now Albania’s National Historical Museum. Audisio once wrote that the only reason he used the machine gun was that the two pistols he tried to use had jammed. He also said that he had no orders to shoot Petacci—but she wouldn’t let go of Il Duce.

LEE HARVEY OSWALD’S GUNS

The gun that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly used to assassinate President John F. Kennedy is a Mannlicher-Carcano .38 bolt-action rifle, 40 inches long, and weighs eight pounds. He bought it through a mail-order company for $12.78. Something with as much historical significance as Oswald’s rifle would become the property of the people of the United States, right? Wrong. Murder weapons are normally returned to the families of their owners, and Oswald’s gun was no exception—it was returned to Oswald’s widow. The National Archives purchased the rifle from Marina Oswald. The Archives also has the .38 Special Smith & Wesson Victory revolver that Oswald had with him that day and used (allegedly) to kill Officer J. D. Tippett before being arrested. Two days later, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby.

A lantern in the tomb of Buddhist Kobo Daishi has been burning for over 1,100 years.

JACK RUBY’S GUN

Ruby was a Dallas strip-club owner and small-time mobster who killed the alleged killer of the president. Just why he did it remains a mystery. But on November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas jail—which at the time was crowded with police officers, reporters, and cameramen—Ruby walked right up to Oswald and shot him once in the side. The gun he used was a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver that he bought at Ray’s Hardware and Sporting Goods (on the advice of Dallas police detective Joe Cody).

The gun was returned to Ruby’s family, where it promptly became tangled in a legal battle over Ruby’s estate between the lawyer who was appointed executor and Ruby’s brother, Earl. It wouldn’t be resolved until 1991, when a judge found for Earl Ruby, who immediately put the gun up for auction and it sold to a collector named A. V. Pugliese. Price: $220,000. In 1992 a friend of Pugliese’s brought it to Washington, D.C., and offered to show it to Speaker of the House Thomas Foley. The gun was seized by police and almost destroyed, per D.C.’s strict gun-control laws, but lawyers were able to get it back. On November 24, 1993, the 30th anniversary of the shooting, Pugliese had Earl Ruby fire 100 shots with the gun and offered the spent shells for sale. Price: $2,500 each. (They only sold a few.)